The Tree of Man(1955) Character of Amy Parker

The Tree of Man(1955)

Character of Amy Parker

v As a symbolic character:-

            “The Tree of Man” is a symbolic novel. White has used different images and symbols to heighten the effect of spiritual awareness in different characters to lead from ignorance to spiritual awareness. In the novel White portrays the married life of Stan Parker, a farmer of Durilgai and his wife Amy. The word ‘tree’ in the title of this novel stands for Stan’s quest of growth, for inexhaustible life. In Stan we find ‘the melancholic longing for permanence, while Amy stands of motion in life. Stan sets out in each of permanence. He removes all the bushes from his farm and whishes that his wife should live peacefully in his ‘honest house’ Here they take roots. They milk cows and grow cabbages. Amy plants garden. The neighbours also join them. Thus entire threads of the move round Stan’s identity findings and Amy’s bridal day and her present mental state.

v Amy’s  Hungry of Stan’s Love  :-

            When Stan takes Amy home just after his marriage, his cart jolts through the windy countryside. On the way, he dose don’t waste his time by talking to her or by showing her the beautiful scene around. He identifies himself simply with the permanence. Referring to Amy’s response to such a cold treatment White remarks,

            “She had begun to hate the wind, and the distance, and the road, because her importance tended to dwindle.

            She is a radical woman. She is restless and hungry of Stan’s love. The rose bush which she plants in the first days of her marriage serves as an outward sign of her emotions. Amy’s rose bush is juxtaposed to Stan’s tree. The giant size of the trees overshadows the rose bush. In this way, her husband Stan, like a giant  tree overshadows her passivity. 

v Amy’s  Frustration and Despair :-

             Later on, Amy becomes older and harder. The roses and cabbages of her youth are replaced in her middle age by the shrubs. At this age, she feels great frustration and despair in her. She realizes that she has never been worthy of Stan. This illumination of her should make her weary. Her want to be loved by her husband made her completely frustrated woman. On the mirror of her room, she writes the word, ‘Leo’. It was indeed a shameful act. After much repentance of her adultery, she rubs off the name but it is imprinted forever on her physical as well as spiritual plain. Her materialistic approaches to life rebound to her like boomerang. Thus she has become the victim of ‘Temptation’. She is thus ‘a modern Eve’ stand for materialistic happiness.

v Amy’s realization of the mystery :-

            We can notice well ‘Amy’s realization of the mystery that lies in the character of Stan. She makes every effort to make her husband realize her want from life living. She knows too that she does not posses her husband’s true emotion. And this constantly makes her restless. She cherishes a hopeless desire to grasp his thought. She always yearns to know and have him. She has an ardent desire to look into the inside of his skill and mind of Stan, but her husband remains the same.

            Her emotional inner self, never reaches to grab her husband’s mysterious yet peaceful living. The rose bushes of her life are thus replaced by the shrubs in her middle age. One more critic Beatson, in ‘Common Wealth Literature has points out ‘Stan Parker loves God through Nature, While Amy must find her love personalized in those around her.

v Amy’s Violent Self and Jealousy :-

            Amy’s violent self and jealousy leads her away from spiritual state of life. Amy must find her love personalized in those around her. Her need to express love through the body is frustrated by Stan’s ability to fulfill himself in Nature. She desires bodily pleasure that are denied by her husband. So he surrenders herself to the sexual pleasure. So she submits to adultery in the an attempt to fought out her disgust while making love to Leo, a commercial traveler. Amy finds it difficult to escape from her husband. She is swayed by the materialistic thought. She is governed by ‘a strange dictatorship of the body. Therefore a critic like Manfred Mackenzie states “Amy’s vision of life is essentially ‘corporeal’ (bodily)

v Amy’s illumination of her soul:-   

            After falling into worldly desires, jealousy and evil ways of life Amy thinks that she should be given another opportunity for total destruction. She realizes that she has never been worthy of Stan. Thus she feels ‘inner-illumination of her soul which leaves her weary. Stan’s discovery of Amy’s infidelity leads him to his loss of faith in God as well as Man.Both Amy and Stan or Man and Woman accept each other’s mystery. Amy becomes bitter and confused, when her son Ray dies a sordid death. At the end of the novel Stan becomes one with God. Amy still clings to her world possessions. 

The Tree of Man(1955) Imagery/ Symbolism

The Tree of Man(1955)

Imagery/ Symbolism

Q. Discuss the use of Imagery and Symbolism in ‘The Tree of Man’. ‘Symbolic significance extends the boundaries of the Modern novel, How far does it true to Tree of Man.

v  What Symbolism is:-

            Symbolism is a movement associated with a group of French writers 1880-95. It may be seen as a reaction against dominate realist and naturalist tendencies in literature.  The poets like Mallarme, Verlaine, Rimbaudand Laforgue were associated with the symbolic movement. According to C. L. Lewis

            “Symbolism comes of us from Greece. It makes its first effective appearance in European thought with the Dialogue of Plato.”

            In the broadest sense of the term a symbol is anything which signifies something else. A symbol is applied only to a word or phrase signifying an object which itself has significance.

           

v   Stan as a symbolic character:-

            In this novel White portrays the married life of Stan Parker, a farmer of Durilgai and his wife Amy. The word ‘tree’ in the title of this novel stands for Stan’s quest of growth, for inexhaustible life. In Stan we find ‘the melancholic longing for permanence, while Amy stands of motion in life. Stan’s mother expects him to be teacher of a preacher. He should teach the people ‘the word of poets and God; but the young Stan sets out ins each of permanence. He removes all the bushes from his farm and whishes that his wife should live peacefully in his ‘honest house’ Here they take roots. They milk cows and grow cabbages. Amy plants garden. The neighbours also join them.

           

v  Symbolic significance of the title:-

            In this novel the very title, “The Tree of Man” is highly suggestive symbolic. The tree is a complex symbol used in many religious texts like “The Bible”, “The Bhagvat Gita”, “The Upanishad” and “The Kabbala”. This becomes the central image in this novel with no plot, except the only one of living and dying’. This novel was formerly entitled as ‘A life Sentence on Earth”. The Word ‘Tree’ denotes the life of the cosmos. It stands for inexhaustible life. If corresponds to the cross of redemption. According the Christian philosophy the cross is often depicted as the ‘Tree of the life.

v  Symbol of the tree as life:- 

            ‘The tree of Life is a standard Biblical symbol, but White is almost as familiar with the Kabbala as with the Bible. The Kabbala helps to understand the novel even better. The Sephiorotic tree has two aspects one benigh and other mallgn. This double-natural tree is a picture both of the Universe and of the Human mind. If one looks into one’s heat, one will see the holy aspect of the tree. The tree also symbolizes the dual nature of Gemini, the paralleled worlds of living and knowing. The image of tree is in a completely organic relation with the story of Stan and Amy Parker, the representative man and woman. The story of the novel begins with the image of tree and it also ends with reference to the same image. White says,

            “The rooted trees fill Stan with the melancholy longing for permanence.

            Here the natural growth of the trees provides a symbol of cohesive Unity in man’s life. Man can not exist in chaos. Moments before his death Stan Parker finds himself at the centre of cosmic Mandala to whose outer circle the God is related. Thus Stan experiences his most magnificent vision of totality.

 

v  Symbols of roses, cabbages and shrubs:-

            The triple symbols of roses, cabbages and shrubs provide a comparative study of Amy bridal day and her present mental stage. In the Initial days after her marriage, Amy plants a garden the rose bush serves as an outward sign of her emotions. Amy’s rose bush is juxtaposed to Stan’s trees. The giant size of the trees overshadows the rose bush. Later on, Amy becomes older and harder. The rose bushed and cabbages of her youth are replaced in her middle age of the shrubs. Her shrubs lack the imaginativeness which her roses possessed. Instead of artistic order the represent anarchy and chaos a destructive kind of the fruitful ness which is more monstrous than natural. It becomes a haphazard sort of garden. All flowers and leaves are inter-locked in the garden. The shrubs are blowing in each other.

v   Significance of Natural cycle as a symbol.

            “The Tree of Man” follows the pattern of the natural cycle. The four parts of the novel refer to the four reasons. The action of the novel progresses through the stages of innocence, experience death and reconciliation.  The natural disaster in every stage creates a kind of a crisis which leads to search for permanence. The natural disasters in the four stages are storm, flood, fire and drought. These elements also stand for the difference in responses of Stan and Amy to Nature. In the midst of crisis and changes, they are in search of something firm and constant. These great symbols are tactfully used by Whit in this novel. They provide climatic reference for the lives of the Parkers. They are the symbols of their emotional condition. They symbolize progress or evolution in man’s life.

v  Storm as a symbol.

            Another significant symbol is the storm which follows the visit of pediar. It threatens the very existence of Stay and Amy. White remarks, “The whole earth was in motion, a motion of wind and streaming trees and he was in danger of being carried with it. Fear death grips them. Stand looks up the Providencefor sympathy.

v  The house

            The next the important symbol is ‘the house. Here it provides only an ‘illusion of safety’. Stan and Amy cling together in fear against the force of Nature. They make physical efforts to sustain their existence against the force of Nature. The God of storms, floods, fire and disaster sends upon the earth gusty winds and clouds which scatter men and women like leaves. At this time, Stan’s sense of personal identity begins to slip away from him. He suddenly feels insignificant. He feels himself like ‘a young naked man’. In an attempt of self-protection, he pushes Amy into the background of his consciousness. Here the storm of his wife fades into insignificance. Uptil now he was firm and strong as a husband, a father and an owner of cattle. But now he comes out of all such self-satisfaction. Life begins to take another form and meaning for him.

v  “Floods”

            “Floods” are the symbols of fruitfulness. In this connection Vincent Buckley states, “The effect of the floods is to give the Parkers a new orientation towards each other, Life has erupted in their static live and the suggestion is that it has done of fruitfully.

v  ‘Fire

            Similarly, ‘Fire also stands as symbol. Amy’s imagination and Stan’s physical powers are exposed through the fire when it breaks out in Glastonbury. Like the great flood, the fire is as force that runs all together, trees, birds, animals and men into the State of formlessness.

v  Conclusion:-

            At last White points out that these four members of the Parker family are like the four rivers of paradise that rise at the Tree of Life.

            Thus White has used different images and symbols to heighten the effect of spiritual awareness in different characters to lead from ignorance to spiritual awareness. 

The Tree of Man(1955)Theme

The Tree of Man(1955)Theme

v  A domestic novel about Parker family.

            The Tree of Man is the fourth published novel by the Australian novelist and 1973 Nobel Prize-winner, Patrick White. It is a domestic drama chronicling the lives of the Parker family and their changing fortunes over many decades. It is steeped in Australian folklore and cultural myth, and is recognized as the author's attempt to infuse the idiosyncratic way of life in the remote Australian bush with some sense of the cultural traditions and ideologies that the epic history of Western civilization has bequeathed to Australian society in general

v  Spiritual Issues :-

            In the novel, ‘The Tree of Man’, Patrick White deals with  ambivalence in everything, good and evil, joy and suffering, love and hate, life and death, male and female,  macrocosm and microcosm, drama and actuality.  The action of the novel progresses through the stages of innocence, experience, and death and reconciliation. He draws Australiaas a cold and empty and hollow, a country which seems dull and deadly – a background for his works. The novelist White points out that man is spiritual seekers. He transcends laws and commandments of religion. Spiritual related him to the eternal and the infinite. This shows that man has a higher dimension which transcends his physical and social personality. He is essentially spiritual. His true Religion leads his towards of realization of divinity within

v  Stan’s Longing for Permanence:-

            Stan is the protagonist of this novel. In the novel White portrays the married life of Stan Parker, a farmer of Durilgai and his wife Amy. The word ‘tree’ in the title of this novel stands for Stan’s quest of growth, for inexhaustible life. In Stan we find ‘the melancholic longing for permanence, while Amy stands of motion in life. Stan’s mother expects him to be teacher of a preacher. He should teach the people ‘the word of poets and God; but the young Stan sets out ins each of permanence. He removes all the bushes from his farm and whishes that his wife should live peacefully in his ‘honest house’ Here they take roots. They milk cows and grow cabbages. Amy plants garden. The neighbours also join them.

v  Married Life and Tension :-

            Another influence that proves to be a shaping force in the development of the action of this novel is the benison between the husband and the wife. When Stan takes Amy home just after his marriage, his cart jolts through the windy countryside. On the way, he dos don’t waste his time by talking to her or by showing her the beautiful scene around. He identifies himself simply with the permanence. Referring to Amy’s response to such a cold treatment White remarks, “She had begun to hate the wind, and the distance, and the road, because her importance tended to dwindle. She is a radical woman. She is restless and hungry of Stan’s love. The rose bush which she plants in the first days of her marriage serves as an outward sign of her emotions. Amy’s rose bush is juxtaposed to Stan’s tree. The giant size of the trees overshadows the robe bush. We find the same image of rose bush in White’s earlier novel, ‘The Aunt’s Story” and also in Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”.

v  Stan’s spiritual rebirth.  

            Later on, Amy becomes older and harder. The roses and cabbages of her youth are replaced in her middle age by the shrubs. After her adultery with Leo, she reaches the climax of her frustration and despair. She realizes that she has never been worthy of Stan. This illumination of her should make her weary. On the mirror of her room, she writes the word, ‘Leo’ an act shameful if desirable, but soon she rubs it off savagely. Stan is aware of her affair with Leo. His discovery of Amy’s infidelity leads him to his loss of faith in God as well as man. So his life continues. He endured tension and feel that ‘only the present is real’. Both Amy and Stan accept each other’s mastery. After a temporary psyche death there is a gradual evolution of Stan’s spiritual rebirth.  

v  Generation Gap:-

            Another importance and vividly drawn theme in the novel is the generation gap between father and son.  Stan’s children, Ray and Thelma are a disappointment to him. They show the inability of love deeply; to express strong emotion, even to form friendships because they revel in their own world of thoughts. Stan is inaccessible and lacks affection, while Amy is possessive. She drives Ray away from her. Thelma does a secretarial course at the College for Business Girls and later marries her employer, Dudley Forsdyke in an attempt to achieve gentility and perfection. For her, love means a house and other possessions. Her marriage is without love. She has the spirituality and sexuality of her father. Sometimes she rises to great heights but fails to remain there. On the other handy, Ray hates the gentleness in himself and ruins his life. He shares familiar fascination and disloyalties of Amy he deserts his first wife, Elsie who has a with whom Amy develops a strange attachment. Later on, Ray leaves his mistress, Lola and is shot in the stomach. Thus the writer very cleverly juxtaposes the fire within and without the fire of passion.

v  Predicament of Man:

            The predication of man in Durilgai- the settlement which had began with Stan’s house is to live in nature. The people who lived in the colony were not disturbed by any higher values of life. They were simple folks and believed in living rather than other things. Patrick White offers his commenting sayings

            “One lived. Almost no one questioned the purpose of living. One was born one lived.”

            Stan was an exception to this kind of lives. He, time and again refers to lightening. “ natural phenomenon which stand for a number of thing.” A kind of punishment for sings, making one aware of horror of life or a flash of thing point towards truth.  Thus is the predicament.

v  Search of Identity:-

            It has the major preoccupation thematically that it refers to the identical issue of Australia. He writes the Australian history artistically and metaphorically. That is why it is said,

“It (The Tree of Man) is a book of Australian geneses.”

            Here Stan is the outsider who developed his own history. White depicts no conflict between aborigines and settlers. It gives a picture of Australian life. He gives Australian experience in 19^th century through the chapter of the novel. Vastness and Natural richness of the continent is visible. It is convey through the wild life, thick forest, aural calamites, by the descriptive power of at the atuheor. The gradual change is depicted through

Stan-Ray-Elsie’s son.

            Stan is found in search of identity which e achieves through his grandson. Basic problems faced by the society are articulated very well by him. Day to day requirement,  protection from calamities, anxiety of losing culture, psychological loneliness, connection with cities are some them.

v  Typical Common Wealth Text

            Above all themes along with the following two points it becomes a typical common wealth text-

a.       Like common wealth writer, he uses English language but he doesn’t mind following Austrian touch. It is deliberately creative English. E..g later spelling- changes, structure-proverbs-metaphor-idioms-Australian atmosphere etc.

b.      He does not hesitate in bringing Australian informal English into literary text. He gives reference to Australian life, birds, tress, season, animal. He plays with grammar change spelling ect.

      Thus this text become a typical commonwealth text. Here Australian experiences are articulated in vast form.

v  Conclusion:

            Thus Patrick White tries to detect the metaphysical and philosophical problems. He discuses basic issues of life. E.g. life and death, future, love, marriage, relation with past, nature and man etc. Thus are the themes of Patrick White in His book ‘Tree of Man.

The Tree of Man(1955) 1. Character of Stan Parker

The Tree of Man(1955)

1. Character of Stan Parker

Q. Discuss the thematic concerns of Patrick White in ‘The Tree of Man’ Or Evaluated The Tree of Man as a typical Commonwealth Text. Or Draw a character – sketch of Stan Parker

Introduction:-

                        Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author who is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize.       Critics who have asserted Patrick Victor Martindale (1912-1990) greatness,

“An unmistakably major writer”, 

“Tower over most other living novelists”, 

“The hardly of Australia”,

“Potentiality of greater than any other living novelist.”

            Patrick white is a great modern novelist who has tried to extend the frontier of the novel form in the direction of poetry. His novels are religious poems and their subject is man in all his aspects and the universe in relation to man. He is a ‘vitalist’ who finds the world as a process of becoming, process of spiritual evolution man, man’s transformation into a higher form of life. He puts forth the ideas of pure being which is simply a state of “is-ness” with the whole of creation. According to while, religion means the feeling, acts and experience of individuals in their solitude. For White, the poetic vision doe not include any deity or superhuman person but the omnipresent Divinity in things. He sees the entire natural world as a manifestation of divinity. He finds God in everything, every religion, every art.

Story’s in Brief

v  protagonist of this novel.

            Stan is the protagonist of this novel. In the novel White portrays the married life of Stan Parker, a farmer of Durilgai and his wife Amy. The word ‘tree’ in the title of this novel stands for Stan’s quest of growth, for inexhaustible life. In Stan we find ‘the melancholic longing for permanence, while Amy stands of motion in life. Stan’s mother expects him to be teacher of a preacher. He should teach the people ‘the word of poets and God; but the young Stan sets out ins each of permanence. He removes all the bushes from his farm and whishes that his wife should live peacefully in his ‘honest house’ Here they take roots. They milk cows and grow cabbages. Amy plants garden. The neighbours also join them.

v  A tension between the husband and the wife

            Another influence that proves to be a shaping force in the development of the action of this novel is the tension between the husband and the wife. When Stan takes Amy home just after his marriage, his cart jolts through the windy countryside. On the way, he dos don’t waste his time by talking to her or by showing her the beautiful scene around. He identifies himself simply with the permanence. Referring to Amy’s response to such a cold treatment White remarks, “She had begun to hate the wind, and the distance, and the road, because her importance tended to dwindle. She is a radical woman. She is restless and hungry of Stan’s love. The rose bush which she plants in the first days of her marriage serves as an outward sign of her emotions. Amy’s rose bush is juxtaposed to Stan’s tree. The giant size of the trees overshadows the robe bush. We find the same image of rose bush in White’s earlier novel, ‘The Aunt’s Story” and also in Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”.

v  Stan’s spiritual rebirth. 

             Later on, Amy becomes older and harder. The roses and cabbages of her youth are replaced in her middle age by the shrubs. After her adultery with Leo, she reaches the climax of her frustration and despair. She realizes that she has never been worthy of Stan. This illumination of her should make her weary. On the mirror of her room, she writes the word, ‘Leo’ an act shameful if desirable, but soon she rubs it off savagely. Stan is aware of her affair with Leo. His discovery of Amy’s infidelity leads him to his loss of faith in God as well as man. So his life continues. He endured tension and feel that ‘only the present is real’. Both Amy and Stan accept each other’s mastery. After a temporary psyche death there is a gradual evolution of Stan’s spiritual rebirth. 

v  As a failure father and inaccessible character:-

            Another importance and vividly drawn theme in the novel is the generation gap between father and son.  Stan’s children, Ray and Thelma are a disappointment to him. They show the inability of love deeply; to express strong emotion, even to form friendships because they revel in their own world of thoughts. Stan is inaccessible and lacks affection, while Amy is possessive. She drives Ray away from her. Thelma does a secretarial course at the College for Business Girls and later marries her employer, Dudley Forsdyke in an attempt to achieve gentility and perfection. For her, love means a house and other possessions. Her marriage is without love. She has the spirituality and sexuality of her father. Sometimes she rises to great heights but fails to remain there. On the other handy, Ray hates the gentleness in himself and ruins his life. He shares familiar fascination and disloyalties of Amy he deserts his first wife, Elsie who has a with whom Amy develops a strange attachment. Later on, Ray leaves his mistress, Lola and is shot in the stomach.

           

v  His achievement of oneness with God  

            Thus the Parker family resembles to the four rivers of paradise that rise at the foot of the Tree of Life, or the four cardinal points or elements. According to a Hindi belief completeness has four angles and it is supported by four legs. A great psychologist, Jung has built up a pattern of the human psyche which has for functions; Sensing, intuiting, feeling and thinking. Here these four members of the Parker family show four ways of living; Stan achieves oneness with God and Nature; Amy becomes bitter and confused, Ray dies a sordid death and Thelma become a spiritual non-entity

            At the end Stan becomes one with God. Amy still clings to her world of possessions. Stan dies with a hope that his grandson would write a poem of life.

 “So he would write a poem of life of all life,

what he did not know but knew”

The novel ends with a note the bush continues to lie even as human beings succeed in generations. White says, “So that in the end there were the trees. The boy walking, so that in the end, there was no end.” “The tree of man’ is used here as multi-faceted image which spreads leaves of heightened and illuminated awareness. Thus “The tree of Man” is the story of a layman’s journey from ignorance to spiritual awareness.

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